A Joyful Garden Sweet Potato Bread (Vegan and Gluten-Free!)

April 08, 2018•
Sulinya Ramanan

I love fruit breads. Banana bread, zucchini bread (yes, zucchini is a fruit), pumpkin bread (pumpkin is a fruit, too)… they are all so moist, fragrant, and delicious! But I have been curious about what would happen if I were to replace fruit with a moist root vegetable. I just got a huge sack of sweet potatoes from Costco, so naturally I had to try making a sweet bread with it. And (spoiler alert) the result was amazing! This beauty is vegan, gluten-free, grain-free, high in protein, free of refined sugar, and paleo-friendly! It's also loaded with vitamins, antioxidants, and fiber. So try making this delicious bread, and if you have some left over and it goes a little stale, try making pain perdu (traditional French toast) with it! As always, let us know if you try it, and what you think.

To make the mashed sweet potato, preheat your oven to 400°F. Use a fork to puncture 2-3 sweet potatoes in several places, and lay them on a tray. Bake them until they start to ooze from the holes. At this point, the peels should readily come off. If they do not, bake longer. When they are done, peel them and mash them up in a bowl. Store the mashed sweet potatoes in the fridge until you are ready to use them.

To make the bread, brew the Joyful Garden tea as strongly as you can (otherwise, the flavor can easily get washed out by other ingredients). Then, add all the ingredients except the maple syrup (or sweetener of choice) and flaxseed to a food processor (adding in more liquid ingredients towards the bottom. Slowly add in the maple syrup, testing periodically, to check the sweetness. Lastly, blend in the flaxseed until smooth and fully mixed.

Preheat your oven to 375°F. Line a baking pan with parchment paper and oil the surface appropriately, then fill the pan. Pour in the batter, smooth out the top, and bake until it is cooked to your liking. It should take about one hour. I like my bread moist, so mine lasted about 50 minutes in the oven. But make sure to adjust the bake time, and even temperature, as needed, because these can be affected by your climate, altitude, and humidity. Enjoy!